Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

...looks to me like standard knob and tube wiring, a venerable and now much-maligned way of doing things that conserved wire and did a good job of dissipating heat. The 'knobs' in this instance are two-conductor ceramic insulators rather than the more common single conductor knob.

It's hard to be certain how the luminaire is tied-in, but I'm betting that the thick spot near the round box is a soldered splice, carefully wrapped with rubberized tape where the insulation had been removed to make the join.

The "main" line shaft is segmented, you can see two control arms (hanging down at about a 60deg angel) they're connected to a "throw out bearing" (note the Y connection at the bearings) these control arms engage/disengage the large driven pulley's. from the "live" main line shaft.

I recall that it took a special eye/touch to "throw" the control arms at the right time or else you got quite a kick off the control arm.

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.